


Man Flu And Other Stories

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Moirallegiance, don't think too hard about the setting, kinkmeme fills
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-04
Updated: 2011-09-04
Packaged: 2017-10-23 10:33:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/249330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For <a href="http://homesmut.livejournal.com/5183.html?thread=3648319#t3648319">this</a> kinkmeme prompt.</p><p>Humans who get sick get hot drinks and painkillers. Trolls who get sick get culled. This causes some panic when Rose gets a cold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Man Flu And Other Stories

It was all Rose's fault really.

No one even noticed at first; it wasn't until the third time Rose made a faint polite wheezing noise, such as might be made by a young lady of intelligence and poise sneezing very quietly into a monogrammed pink handkerchief - which is in fact what Rose was doing - that anybody looked up. Karkat said, "That's annoying. Stop it."

Kanaya said, "What is the matter, Rose?"

Rose lowered the handkerchief. Her nose was very faintly pink. "Only a minor chill," she said. "A slight ailment, it will pass quickly. Humans are prone to them at this time of year."

"I must say I find it upsetting to hear that. You are sure you will recover swiftly?"

"Of -  _choo!_  - course," said Rose. She lowered the handkerchief. "Though I do find it irritating. I have alchemized myself a large supply of handkerchiefs which will certainly see me through the duration."

"Is there anything which I can do to assist?"

"Thank you, Kanaya, I am perfectly all right -"

"Rose!" said John, who'd been wandering around the lab annoying people and fiddling with things he probably shouldn't have been fiddling with. "You've got a cold? You should have said!"

Rose sighed. "I was afraid of this, which is why I was trying to be discreet. Yes, John, I have a cold. However I do not require any -"

"Hot chocolate," John informed Kanaya knowledgeably. "When humans have colds you have to give them lots of hot things to drink."

"This is very interesting," said Kanaya. "I shall make a mental note."

"Oh  _please_ ," said Rose.

"What is it, Rose?" said Kanaya.

By this point everyone was regarding the scene with interest. "Give it up, Lalonde," commented Dave from across the room. "You gotta let your gf do her gf thing."

Rose opened her mouth, possibly to protest the advent of hot chocolate from her girlfriend or anyone else, but was interrupted by another sneeze. Her nose was very pink now. She looked down at her hands. "If you really must then I suppose I wouldn't say no to some tea," she mumbled. "With honey. And lemon."

"I shall see to it at once," said Kanaya, standing. "Thank you, John."

"You're welcome!" said John cheerfully. "I'm here for all your human culture needs!"

"And you are certain you will recover quickly?"

"Oh yes yes yes," said Rose irritably. "It's just a cold."  
_

So it was Rose's fault, because of course the infection turned out to be catching. Dave came down with it the same afternoon, and everyone noticed at once because of the way his face went pale and then he ran out of the room to throw up. When he came back in he was still pale and kind of sweaty. "Hey Dave human," said Terezi, "what's wrong? You smell gross now!"

"Yeah well blame Rose Lalonde and her bazooka nose," said Dave, "spraying out the infected matter, gonna start a fucking pandemic any minute, just you wait."

"It wouldn't be very difficult -  _choo!_  - to start a pandemic now," said Rose with a sharp glint in her eye. "In fact with a 50% infection rate we could say we have one already."

"Get the law on her, TZ," advised Dave, "she's using fucking biological weapons on me. That shit ain't Geneva."

"Trolls like biological weapons," said Terezi. Her tongue flickered between her sharp teeth as she hissed the  _sss_  of weapons. "They're good for culling weaklings. Are you a weakling, Dave?"

"Fuck no," said Dave. "I just got an army of miniature Lalondes dancing on my digestive system, it's cool. My immune system is already on it. My immune system is gonna hunt down those invaders and expel them with prejudice."

"It seems like your immune system is already hard at work on meeting its expulsion quotas," Rose agreed, taking a sip of her tea. "May I recommend that you go to bed with a buc - a, ah, basin, rather than risk transforming this small common area into a vomitorium?"

"I'm fine," said Dave.

"You don't look all that fine, Dave!" said Jade, coming over and looking at him close up. "Your nose is all red and you're really pale. I think you should go to bed too!"

"His nose is red?" said Terezi, and promptly checked for herself by licking all over his face.

Dave flailed, trying to push her off. "Agh, TZ!"

"It is! Much redder than usual!" Terezi announced. "But... not delicious at all." Her face fell and she sat back on her haunches looking sombre. "I think you should go to your recuperacoon like the human girls are saying, Dave. You're the wrong kind of red. You wouldn't want to get really sick!"

"I'm not gonna get really sick, it's just the flu - John, man, stop wandering around picking things up and putting them down like a moron, help a brother out here. These chicks are fucking ganging up on me."

"Doctor Egbert to the rescue!" said John. He came and stood next to Dave and looked him up and down, then sucked in a breath. Jade giggled. John pretended to stroke an invisible beard, pulled his most serious face and said, "I diagnose a serious case of MAN FLU. You should get into bed without delay if you want to survive!"

"Oh for fuck's sake," said Dave.

"With HOT DRINKS," advised John.

"I'll get the hot drink!" said Terezi, jumping to her feet. She took Dave's arm and started to walk him in the direction of his room. "It's the lovely gooey brown chocolatey drink that fixes it, isn't it?"

"Apple juice," said Dave as he was dragged helplessly away.

"What's that, coolkid?"

"When I'm sick. My Bro always got me apple juice."   
_

Rose's cold was completely gone by the next day, and by the day after Dave had stopped going pale and throwing up and was only sniffing occasionally and complaining that his throat hurt. The trolls were being pretty strange about the whole thing - Kanaya had greeted Rose in the morning with, "I am extremely relieved to see you have recovered, Rose," and Terezi was hovering over Dave nonstop, so close that she occasionally tripped him up by accident - well, the first time was probably by accident, anyway.

"Jegus, woman!" said Dave the third time, and then spoiled it by having a coughing fit. "Leave me alone for ten seconds, or I swear - look, I'm gonna go hang out with Rose, you roleplay dragon smut or whatever it is you do."

"You should be more understanding, Dave," said Rose once he'd finally convinced the blind girl to leave him alone. Serenely knitting two and purling one she added, "The trolls are so much hardier than we are that I suspect they have not seen much illness in their lives. Your kaleidoscopic displays of the contents of your digestive system yesterday probably frightened Terezi quite badly."

"Whatever," said Dave.

"She is completely right!" announced Vriska over Dave's shoulder. Dave jumped and then glared at her through his shades. "Trolls are not neeeeeeeearly so pathetic as you humans and are almost never sick at all! Terezi's just scared that her boyfriend human really IS a weakling. Wouldn't that be embarrassing!"

"Oh gog, it's the psycho," said Dave. "Go away."

"I'm just saying!" said Vriska, tossing her hair. "You should be glad that I'm educating you!"

"Thank you, Vriska, now please leave," said Rose.

"Whatever you say!" said Vriska. "I just thought you'd want to know that your little green friend won't get out of bed! John said you would."

"Jade's sick now?" said Dave.   
_

Jade wouldn't get out of bed. "My head hurts," she said. "My thoat hurts. My stomach hurts. I couldn't sleep. I hate everything. Leave me alone." There were huge dark circles under her eyes.

"There there, Jade, it'll be okay," said John. "Drink some of this -"

"AND I DON'T WANT ANY HOT CHOCOLATE!" shouted Jade, and then coughed a long, hard, hacking cough. "Ow."

"Look, Jade, Dave and Rose are here to see you," John said. "And you probably just caught what they had and they're both all right, so you'll feel better soon, promise."

"I DON'T CARE."

The other three all exchanged looks. Jade was one of those people who was never mean, so when she was it was awful.

"Go away," said Jade. Exhausted tears were starting to leak out of the corners of her eyes. "I hate you all. Leave me alone. And what's HE doing here?"

They all looked around. Karkat was hovering in the doorway looking cross, which was how he always looked so it didn't mean much. He had a little white strip of something in his hand. "I brought stuff," he said flatly. Karkat said everything flatly. "I looked on the human internet and alchemized it. It's called Feuronen or something moronic like that."

"Painkillers!" said John. "That's an amazing idea, Karkat, you're amazing."

"Why didn't we think of that?" said Rose.

"GIVE THEM TO ME," said Jade, and then nearly choked coughing. Karkat took a couple of steps into the room and handed them over diffidently. Jade sat up for long enough to take two and swallow them down with a huge gulp of hot chocolate. Then she lay down again.

"Now everyone go away," she said piteously. "I'm tired."

"Get well soon, Jade!" said John.

"I do help you feel better in short order," said Rose. Dave nodded in a cool way. Karkat stood there awkwardly. Jade rolled over and pulled the covers over her head.  
_

It took Jade three days to get better, and during those three days it was anyone's guess whether she'd be weepy, sweet or furious with whoever walked in to take her some more alchemized painkillers. Karkat ended up doing it most of the time. He always emerged from Jade's room with a sick, tight expression, a little like fear, but none of the kids really noticed.   
_

When John finally caught the flu - which was pretty much inevitable - he got the epic version. Rose theorized that the virus had adapted to godtier level in order to infect the godtier player, which made as much sense as anything. John being John he tried to ignore the early stages of sniffling and coughing, and so no one realized he'd caught it too until he fainted.

"John?" said Rose. "John!"

All the trolls had jumped to their feet, and even Dave was looking ever so slightly perturbed. Jade, still wrapped in her blanket though she'd started consenting to leave her bed a few days ago, went wide-eyed and rushed over to John's side. "John?" she said. "John, wake up!"

John opened his eyes. "What?"

"You fell over!"

"I did?" said John. "Ugh... Jade, my head feels a bit weird. I think I'm just going to stay down here for a moment."

"Oh no you don't," said Jade. "You're sick, John! You should go to bed at once!"

Everyone was spurred into action. After nearly a week of first Rose and then Dave and then Jade being unwell, they all knew what to do. Jade and Dave between them got John onto his feet and led him off to bed. Kanaya presented a fresh set of handkerchiefs. Terezi supplied the basin. Karkat dug out the last of the Feuronen. Vriska rushed off to alchemize some hot chocolate. Rose kept knitting.

Vriska, rushing back with two full mugs of hot chocolate, stopped to sneer at her. "And you call me psycho!!!!!!!!" she said. "How can you just sit there and knit when John is sick? What about the human emotion called friendship?"

"I'm sure he'll be perfectly fine," said Rose, knitting one and purling two.   
_

John was not perfectly fine. He was quite a lot sicker than any of the others had been. He tossed and turned and couldn't sleep. When they gave him food he wouldn't eat it. Rose quietly suggested soup - a foodstuff which none of the trolls had ever heard of, weirdly enough - and he ate some of that, but he couldn't keep most of it down. He coughed and sneezed until he was short of breath. He claimed that his head hurt, even after taking two of the extra-strong Feuronen. He lay in his bed looking drained and clammy with his eyes rimmed with red, and he didn't even want his hot chocolate.

By the fourth day when he still wasn't getting better even Rose was getting worried. She went and sat in his room and held his hand occasionally. The others kept poking their heads round the door to see how he was. Dave and Jade looked in about once every half hour, and Karkat nearly as often. The one that surprised Rose was Vriska. By the end of the fourth day she was peering nervously round the doorframe every ten minutes. "Is he better yet?" she'd stage-whisper.

"Not yet," Rose answered each time.

 

On the morning of the fifth day John's temperature started to climb. He kicked off the covers and complained that he was too hot - no, now he was too cold - and why was it so bright? Rose turned all the lights down even further. She gave him more painkillers, as often as the packet said she could, and tried to make him drink water. By midafternoon John's fever had turned into delirium. He started crying out for his dad and trying to get out of bed to find him. Rose wasn't strong enough to stop him; she shouted for Vriska to come and help.

  
"What's happening to him?" Vriska asked, sounding absolutely terrified as she wrestled John back into bed. Normally the two of them were evenly matched, but John was weak after not eating properly for several days.

"It's a fever," said Rose. "You get them sometimes with a really bad flu. It'll pass - we just have to get him back into bed and make him keep drinking and taking the Feuronen." She sounded a lot more authoritative than she actually felt. 

"It's been nearly a week!"

"It's just a fever," Rose repeated doggedly.

John finally quieted down in the early evening. He fell asleep, breathing evenly, and when Rose felt his forehead it was cool. She sighed with relief, left a glass of water next to his bed, and went out to the common area where the others were waiting.

Everyone looked at her eagerly.

"Get me something to drink," said Rose.

"Would you like tea with honey and lemon, Rose?" asked Kanaya.

"No," said Rose. "I'd like tea with -" oh, the hell with it "- with gin, please. Just a little."

It was what her mother would have done. Sometimes, Rose thought, life felt like you needed an adult.  
_

John slept quietly that night and for most of the next day. Rose and Dave and Jade all exchanged relieved looks and hugs - well, Jade hugged each of the other two, and Rose and Dave nodded at each other in a cool way. John was better and things were going to be okay.

It took them a while to notice that the trolls didn't seem to have picked up on their relief.

They were edgy all day. Kanaya tripped over the ends of her own scarf. Terezi hardly tried to lick anything, and when she stuck her nose in the general location of Karkat's ear Karkat snapped ferociously at her and then of all things apologized. Vriska didn't try to annoy or upset anybody once. She'd taken up residence in one corner of the room, and curled up there like a spider in its web, glaring at her own feet and at anyone who got too close.

At last she stood up and said, "I can't take it!!!!!!!!"

Everyone looked at her.

"This is horrible. Humans are horrible. YOU'RE all horrible. I'm going to do it if you can't!" She squared her shoulders and headed for the door that led off to people's rooms. 

Karkat scrambled to get in front of her. "STOP," he said. "Humans are different, we all worked that out. And anyway it's not your place, Serket!"

Vriska glared at him. There were blue tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. "Then whose place is it anyway, huh, Mr. Glorious Leader? He's MY moirail! I should do it!"

Dave leaned over to Rose and whispered, "Do you have any idea what the fuck they're talking about?"

"No," replied Rose, "but I'm a little concerned."

"Since when is he your moirail? Just because you've got a fucking pale crush doesn't mean you get culling duties, you huge bitch -"

The tears broke loose and poured down Vriska's face in a blue flood. "Shut up, shut up, shut UP, Karkat, have you never felt an actual moment of true pity in your entire life???????? If you could have SEEN - and they're just going to leave him! It's awful! I HAVE to cull him!"

"Okay, I really don't like the sound of that," said Dave. "Listen, spidergirl -"

"Are you guys fighting about something?" said John from the doorway.

He was wrapped in his blanket and leaning heavily on the door frame, and his eyes were bloodshot and his hair was sticking up and his face was the approximate color of old cheese. On the other hand, he was upright. Rose was impressed.

"John," said Vriska, sounding shaky and broken.

"Vriska? Oh man, you're crying! What's wrong?" John tried to take a step forward and then thought the better of it. "Okay, I'm not too steady on my feet right now, you're gonna have to come here if I'm going to hug you -"

Vriska flung herself forward into John's arms, sobbing. John made an OOF sound. "What's the matter?" he said. "Karkat? Guys? What's going on?"

  
"I'm not entirely clear on the matter myself," said Rose, "but I believe we have just come face to face with another major set of cultural differences. Am I right in guessing that trolls don't fall ill?"

The question was addressed to the room at large, and no one answered at first. Vriska was still sobbing blue tears into John's shoulder. Karkat was watching them, looking gobsmacked. Terezi was facing the other direction entirely, although since it was Terezi that didn't necessarily mean much. Eventually Kanaya answered, "You are correct, Rose. Trolls are very rarely unwell, and the rare cases where illness does not clear up almost immediately are usually grounds for immediate culling. No troll would dream of leaving someone they felt pity for to suffer the agony of slow illness and death."

"Hmm," said Rose. "Whereas in human culture unhealthy individuals are cared for by the group for as long as it takes them to recover, and indeed continue to be cared for even when there is no hope of recovery. Influenza, I might add, although it does have fatal strains, is usually no more than a nasty episode lasting a few days. None of us were ever in any serious danger from this illness."

"Yeah!" said John. "Jegus, did I scare you guys? I'm sorry! Vriska?"

“You mean you aren’t going to die of MAN FLU?” said Vriska. 

“Man flu isn’t really dangerous at all!” said John. “Actually, strictly speaking, what I had wasn’t man flu, it was just flu. But I’m not going to die of that either, I promise!”

"Oh. Well, I knew that reeeeeeeeally," said Vriska, muffled in his shoulder. 

John awkwardly patted the back of her head, not quite stroking her hair, not exactly not either. "Yeah, so please don't cull me, that's not what humans do! Even though, um, it is nice that you care."

"She doesn't CARE, moron," said Karkat. "She's a troll. She PITIES you."

"Shut up Karkat!" said Vriska, straightening up and baring her teeth at him. Even with gritty blue tearstains all over her face the effect was still impressively scary.

"I – oh. Pity is like troll love, right?" John said. "So, um - you have a crush on me, Vriska?"

"No!" said Vriska. She hesitated, toeing the floor. "Though I mean, if you really WANTED to be moirails I guess I wouldn't miiiiiiiind..."

"This is nauseating," Rose remarked, not quite under her breath. Dave nodded. Even Jade pulled a pained face.

"This is NAUSEATING," Karkat said. "Yes, idiot human, she's got a pitycrush, she wants to be your moirail, and you'd have to be mad or stupid to agree but since you're obviously both why don't the two of you just kissyface at each other already and get out of here before I choke on my own vomit."

So in the end, really, it was entirely Rose's fault that John and Vriska became moirails and started holding hands and cuddling everywhere. If she hadn't caught that very ladylike little chill, it would never have happened, and everyone would have been spared a great deal of nauseating public affection.

On the other hand, as Kanaya pointed out later, anything which made Vriska less unstable was probably a good thing. And it turned out that tea with a splash of gin wasn’t half bad.


End file.
